


what if we ruin it all (and love like fools)

by Zari_x_Charlie (SuperSanversShipper)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Green Arrow and the Canaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s08e09 Green Arrow & the Canaries, F/F, Post-Crisis, post 8x09
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23188132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperSanversShipper/pseuds/Zari_x_Charlie
Summary: There isn’t a perfect, obvious explanation for how things have changed in the last few weeks — for the way they’ve picked up favourite TV shows to watch together, for the way Dinah knows to grab a bottle of whiskey from the bar after a hard mission, for how Laurel finds herself suddenly knowing what snacks Dinah will want when she goes out shopping on the weekends — and it leaves her a little unsteady.Laurel is uncertain. And she doesn’t like uncertainty.
Relationships: Dinah Drake/Earth-2 Laurel Lance
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	what if we ruin it all (and love like fools)

**Author's Note:**

> Istg this was not supposed to be a multichap fic. But I had an idea and it,,,, snowballed lol. This isn't very good, partially bc I had to write this on the notes app of my phone before transferring it to my shitty tablet thru Google docs and also bc it's completely unbetad. Sorry lol.

_We could turn this place into a base of operations for the Canaries._

For some reason, the words haunt Laurel, even as she lies on the surprisingly soft couch in the middle of the clock tower, a thick blanket cocooning her as she stares up at the mesmerising pink refractions of light against the ceiling.

It’s not what they’re saying, exactly. No, she’s all for starting a network of Canaries, all for creating a group of women to go out there and finish the work her doppelgänger and doppelgänger’s sister had started — to protect the city they loved, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. She doesn’t have much of a problem with this apartment, what with its wonderful views and its ready access to alcohol, being their base, either.

(Any problem she might have with this particular location — that she herself will be disturbed, that anyone who’d come up here could be seen by the patrons of the bar below — are solvable easily enough; she’s already on the lookout for potential apartments, and the bar below has a back entrance that leads directly into the stairs to Dinah’s apartment. Dinah’s even offered her a bartending job to reduce any suspicion as to why she’s always hanging around.)

Really, Laurel would have absolutely no problem with any of what Dinah had suggested, if not for one thing: Dinah’s pronoun of choice.

_We could turn this place into a base._

_We._ Not I, or you and me, but _we._

Dinah’s claimed that she wants to figure out what’s going on with her whole situation — being taken to the future, her past somehow erased — and then potentially go back, but her actions do not concur.

Her choice of words, the strange relaxation in her form (so, so different from the Dinah that Laurel can remember, almost always holding herself taut and ready for battle), all speak to the decision that Laurel suspects that Dinah has already made, even if only subconsciously: she doesn’t truly want to go back. She wants to stay here.

And she wants Laurel to stay with her.

Laurel, with a not-quite-father still waiting on her back in her own present, with a not-quite-sister she doesn’t quite know. Laurel, who still has a whole life waiting for her in the present that they’ve both left behind.

Laurel, who is brash and callous and morally grey and absolutely nothing like the Dinah Laurel Lance of this Earth.

And Dinah wants her. Here.

In a world where people don’t know either of them, a world where even their stories, their lives, probably sound like something right out of a comic book, Dinah seems to have chosen her, and Laurel can only guess as to why. Some parts, Laurel can understand — they’re both a little bit displaced, both the only people left in this time that truly understand some of the things they’ve experienced — but the rest?

She simply can’t figure it out. There isn’t a perfect, obvious explanation for how things have changed in the last few weeks — for the way they’ve picked up favourite TV shows to watch together, for the way Dinah knows to grab a bottle of whiskey from the bar after a hard mission, for how Laurel finds herself suddenly knowing what snacks Dinah will want when she goes out shopping on the weekends — and it leaves her a little unsteady.

Laurel is uncertain. And she doesn’t like uncertainty.

(Uncertainty has a habit of pushing her into bad decisions — it had been the uncertainty of her sister’s betrayal and subsequent “death” that had first led her down the Siren’s path, and it had been the uncertainty of her mother’s inexplicable murder that had eventually led her to becoming one of Zoom’s minions. Hell, it had been the uncertainty of this whole new future, even just a few weeks ago, that had encouraged the pressure she’d put on Mia — not entirely unnecessary or impossible to understand, but perhaps too much, nonetheless.)

The patterns of pink light leaking in through the large clock windows click off, the nightclub in the building next to theirs — next to _Dinah’s_ — reminding Laurel of how much time she’s spent lying awake, considering that one word: _we_.

And this certainly hasn’t been the first night. Perhaps that’s unhealthy — obsessive, even — but Laurel cannot help that she loses sleep over the words that Dinah uses, even in situations when the words are insignificant at best.

_You’re not getting anywhere with this,_ she tells herself, shaking out her shoulders to relax before closing her eyes to try and get some sleep before Dinah wakes her up in the next few hours. With her eyes closed, the air in the loft seems almost too quiet. The loft is high up enough that street noise, or at least what passes for street noise in this outwardly peaceful Star City, is nearly non-existent and even the basic home noises — the air conditioning, the creaking — have all been streamlined by the future tech.

_This is what I have to get used to,_ she thinks, trying to steer herself in the direction of temporary unconsciousness, _I stay here and I have to get used to weirdly quiet nights, stupid future tech, Mia and her naivety…_

_Dinah._

She pauses at the thought, pushing aside the thought of sleep for the moment. It’s true — she’d have to learn to get used to this weird zen version of Dinah all over again, and for whatever reason, the idea sends a shiver down her spine. Laurel chalks it up to nervousness; after all, she’s not very good at talking to people without her usual badass brashness, and although the Dinah she used to know had long since learned to weather her temper, this new version of her seems far more emotional and fragile than before.

The quiet is broken by a tiny creak of the floorboards — somehow a comforting noise, even as Laurel finds herself tensing at it — echoing from the doorway to Dinah’s room. Laurel pushes herself up, squinting into the darkness to try and identify the cause of the noise, adrenaline dripping into her veins like water from a loose tap.

“What are you doing up so late?”

The familiar voice, even laced with an exhaustion emphasised by the glowing numbers on the wall clock, still somehow manages to relax Laurel. She lets herself lean back down onto her elbows as her roommate, dressed for sleep in a pair of shorts and a graphic t-shirt, rubs at her eyes and walks to the kitchen.

“Not much,” Laurel answers, bringing a hand up to brush her hair out of her face, “Just thinking. What about you?”

Dinah, at that, glances down at her hands — where she’s clearly filling a glass of water — before looking back at Laurel with a hint of her signature sass in her voice, “I don’t know, what do you think I’m doing, Laurel?”

Laurel can’t help rolling her eyes, even though the familiar banter lightens the weight in her chest. She’s been a little afraid that with all the things that had changed since Crisis, since Dinah’s relocation, that their dynamic — the push and pull of their relationship — would have as well.

But old habits die hard, and instead of speaking to the rush of relief that floods her at the comment, she opts to hit back with her usual sarcasm.

“I don’t know what comes out of the taps in the future, babe.”

Even in the low light, Laurel can see Dinah’s gaze snap to her own at the last word — her eyes searching and cautious, but with none of that guardedness Laurel can remember from them, even as recently as Oliver’s funeral — and for a second, Laurel doesn’t know why. Flirting is natural to her, easy and simple and meaningless. Except, as Laurel realises with a hint of panic, it isn’t, with Dinah. It isn’t meaningless, isn’t a trivial part of their light banter. Suddenly the word _babe_ is just as meaningful, just as weighted as the _we_ Dinah had used all those weeks ago.

For a second, Dinah doesn’t speak, just watches as the panic blooms on Laurel’s face and it’s too silent again and Laurel’s chest feels too restricting for her lungs and her arms snap to attention at her side, pushing her back to her earlier sitting position. Dinah’s eyes follow her movements, the red light of the clock reflecting off of them and adding to how adrenaline seems to be gushing through Laurel’s veins, more an open tap now than a leaky one.

She opens her mouth to say something, _anything_ to write off her words, already planning ahead and throwing together phrases like _just friends_ and _kidding around_ in a pile of bullshit she hopes Dinah won’t be able to identify, when she looks back up at Dinah again. And every word she’d cobbled together in her head only _moments_ before flickers like a dying flame and disappears. Laurel’s breath catches in her throat when she sees the strange intensity in Dinah’s eyes — wide and focused and so fucking beautiful even with that goddamn clock’s light reflected in them. Her mouth goes dry and even though she can’t quite seem to get her jaws to move, she tries to find the words she’d been pulling out of her ass just moments before because _God_ she hates this uncertainty about what Dinah’s thinking. But before either of them can speak, the water in Dinah’s cup overflows — the chilly silence broken by the thundering drum of water against metal as it bounces and echoes across the open floor plan of Dinah’s apartment — and they both look away.

_Congratulations_ , a cynical part of herself — a remnant of the circumstances that had twisted her into Black Siren — whispers from the back of her mind, _you’ve got a fucking crush on the person who’s least likely to feel the same way._

The word _crush_ sends another drop of adrenaline into the pool already circulating through her bloodstream, and it’s the final nail in the coffin — all the push Laurel needs to start moving again. She finds herself with full control of her limbs and her mouth once more, and she takes the opportunity to fling the blanket off of herself and throw out some excuse — _I have to run an errand_ — that she doesn’t give more than a second’s thought to, grabbing her boots and keys and helmet from where they sit on the cabinet next to the elevator before rushing out. As she leaves, she just barely hears Dinah’s voice through the harsh thumping of her heart in her ears, asking her to wait.

Laurel glances back for just a second at Dinah, standing in front of the elevator in her stupid pink graphic t-shirt and her red pyjama shorts and with wide, open eyes that glint green in the fluorescent light of the elevator, begging her to stay.

She doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> More chapters coming soon! Yell at me to write faster here in the comments or at my tumblr: behrad-tarazis


End file.
